The modernista era
Between the 1888 Exposition and the thirties, Restoration-era industrial Barcelona lived its cultural silver age: modernisme filled the Eixample with organic facades and banked a generation of architects, painters and musicians.
The names
Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch signed the masterpieces: from the Sagrada Família to the Palau de la Música and the Sant Pau hospital, all now UNESCO World Heritage.
The patrons
Behind every house stood a textile fortune: the Güells, Batllós, Milàs. The competition for the most spectacular house on Passeig de Gràcia delivered the block of discord exactly as we visit it today.
The tense city
Tragic Week in 1909 and the labor conflicts recall that the shining city lived beside explosive factory districts: Picasso painted part of his youth inside that tension, at the Els Quatre Gats café.